* 2003 – U. S. troops capture Baghdad ; Saddam Hussein's regime falls two days later.

A team of U. N. inspectors, led by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix was admitted, into the country ; their final report stated that Iraqis capability in producing " weapons of mass destruction " was not significantly different from 1992 when the country dismantled the bulk of their remaining arsenals under terms of the ceasefire agreement with U. N. forces, but did not completely rule out the possibility that Saddam still had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

He resigned as Co-Chairman of Freedom Works in March 2005 after the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) questioned his ties to Samir Vincent, a Northern Virginia oil trader implicated in the U. N. Oil-for-food scandal who pled guilty to four criminal charges, including illegally acting as an unregistered lobbyist of the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein.

Journalist Andrew Cockburn reported in Britain's The First Post that Ekéus told him how former U. S. President Bill Clinton attempted to prevent Saddam Hussein's Iraq from being certified as free of weapons of mass destruction.

Some of these critics, including Paul Wolfowitz and Robert Zoellick, hinted that U. S. ground forces might ultimately be required to help the INC oust Saddam.

The regime of Saddam Hussein was overt following after the U. S .- led 2003 invasion of Iraq and relations with Iraq dramatically improved afterwards.

Immediately after the September 11 attacks U. S. officials speculated on possible involvement by Saddam Hussein.

In March 2003, a coalition of countries led by the U. S. and U. K. invaded Iraq to depose Saddam, after U. S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused him of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to al-Qaeda.

The United States now maintains that Saddam ordered the attack to terrorize the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, but Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the attack which some including the U. S. supported until several years later.

United States Ambassador to Iraq | U. S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie | April Catherine Glaspie meets Saddam for an emergency meeting. As Iraq-Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the U. S. would respond to the prospects of an invasion.

The U. S. also gave Saddam billions of dollars to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets.

U. S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on 25 July 1990, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to give negotiations only ... one more brief chance before forcing Iraq's claims on Kuwait.

Saddam routinely cited his survival as " proof " that Iraq had in fact won the war against the U. S. This message earned Saddam a great deal of popularity in many sectors of the Arab world.

As one U. S. Muslim observer noted: People forgot about Saddam's record and concentrated on America ... Saddam Hussein might be wrong, but it is not America who should correct him.

U. S. officials continued to accuse Saddam of violating the terms of the Gulf War's cease fire, by developing weapons of mass destruction and other banned weaponry, and violating the UN-imposed sanctions.

The international community, especially the U. S., continued to view Saddam as a bellicose tyrant who was a threat to the stability of the region.

When Baghdad fell to U. S-led forces on 9 April, marked symbolically by the toppling of his statue by iconoclasts, Saddam was nowhere to be found.

* 1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western " guests " ( actually hostages ) to try to prevent the Gulf War.

* 1996 – Saddam Hussein's troops seized Irbil after the Kurdish Masoud Barzani appealed for help to defeat his Kurdish rival PUK.

* 1980 – The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kills philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Bint al-Huda after three days of torture.

* 2003 – 2003 invasion of Iraq: Baghdad falls to American forces ; Saddam Hussein statue topples as Iraqis turn on symbols of their former leader, pulling down the statue and tearing it to pieces.

To weaken Saddam Hussein's grip of power, Clinton signed H. R.

During major breaking news events, the BBC News Channel has been broadcast on BBC One ; examples of special broadcasts include the 11 September 2001 attacks, 7 July 2005 London bombings, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the death of Osama bin Laden.

Iraq, after the fall of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is currently experiencing the transition from a command economy under Hussein to a free market economy.

Saddam Hussein at his Trial of Saddam Hussein | trial in 2004.

* 2006 – Saddam Hussein, former Iraqi Dictator, ( executed for war crimes ) ( b. 1937 )

Ba ' ath Party founder Michel Aflaq ( left ) with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ( right ) in 1988.

Ba ' athist heads of state such as Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein created personality cults around themselves portraying themselves as the nationalist saviours of the Arab world.

Ba ' athist Iraq under Saddam Hussein pursued ethnic cleansing or liquidation of minorities, pursued expansionist wars against Iran and Kuwait, and gradually replaced pan-Arabism with an Iraqi nationalism that emphasized Iraq's connection to the glories of ancient Mesopotamian empires, including Babylonia.

The CIA's Special Activities Division created successful guerrilla forces from the Hmong tribe during the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, from the Northern Alliance against the Taliban during the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and from the Kurdish Peshmerga against Ansar al-Islam and the forces of Saddam Hussein during the war in Iraq in 2003.

The Republic was controlled by Saddam Hussein from 1979 to 2003, into which period falls into the war with Iran and the Gulf War.

Saddam Hussein was deposed following the 2003 US-led invasion of the country.

When Saddam Hussein failed to comply with this demand, the Gulf War ( Operation " Desert Storm ") ensued on January 17, 1991.

Although they presented a serious threat to the Iraqi Ba ' ath Party regime, Saddam Hussein managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power.

Saddam was placed at the top of the U. S. list of " most-wanted Iraqis ".

On 13 December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by U. S. forces at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit in a hole in Operation Red Dawn.

Following his capture on 13 December Saddam was transported to a U. S. base near Tikrit, and later taken to the U. S. base near Baghdad.

On 14 December 2003, U. S. administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer confirmed that Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit.

In Clinton's 1998 State of the Union Address, he warned Congress of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's possible pursuit of nuclear weapons:

Enemy of the State: The Trial and Execution of Saddam Hussein.

The idea was initially rejected, at the behest of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but, according to Kampfner, " Undeterred Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening up a second front — against Saddam.

* US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gives a speech at Georgetown University in which she argues that sanctions on Iraq probably will not end until Saddam Hussein is replaced.

* At the United Nations US Secretary of State Colin Powell presents the US government's case against the Saddam Hussein government of Iraq, as part of the diplomatic side of the U. S. plan to invade Iraq.

U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003 speech before the U. N. Security Council, called for action against Iraq and stated falsely that " Saddam Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998 ".

The Butler Review also made a specific conclusion on Bush's 16 words: " By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that ' The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa ' was well-founded.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell called Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha on Monday to discuss the capture of Saddam, whom Washington had named a tyrant, Sinha is said to have reacted in a manner that did not echo the effusion flowing from the rest of the world.

Shortly after, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's national security advisor, Osama El-Baz, sent a message to the U. S. State Department that the Iraqis wanted to discuss the accusations that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and ties with al-Qaeda.

: Up until now, the fiction recklessly spewed by disgruntled intelligence-community retirees and their media enablers — some of whom have conceded that the claim is based on zero evidence — has been that Michael had something to do with the forged Italian documents that, according to the Left ’ s narrative, were the basis for President Bush ’ s “ lie ” in the 2003 State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium ( for nuclear-weapons construction ) in Africa.

* 28 January 2003: United States President George W. Bush delivers his State of the Union address to the United States ' Congress, alleging that Saddam Hussein had ties with terrorist organizations, and that Iraq was a serious threat against the security of U. S. citizens as the world ’ s most dangerous producer of weapons of mass-destruction.

Writer Joost R. Hiltermann has said the United States government and US State Department was particularly important in helping their then ally the Saddam Hussein government in avoiding any serious censure for the campaign and in particular the attack on rebels and civilians in the city of Halabja.

In his January 2003 State of the Union speech, U. S. President George W. Bush said, " The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

In mid-2003, the U. S. government declassified the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which contained a dissenting opinion published by the U. S. Department of State stating that the intelligence connecting Niger to Saddam Hussein was " highly suspect ," primarily because State Department's intelligence agency analysts did not believe that Niger would be likely to engage in such a transaction due to a French consortium which maintained close control over the Nigerien uranium industry.

In February 2005 Wihaib made his first visit to the United States, speaking at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University on his experiences with Saddam and his hopes for Iraq's future.

" Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Voice of America that "[...] Saddam Hussein had his agenda and al-Qaida had its agenda, and those two agendas were incompatible.

Powell acknowledged in January 2004 that the speech presented no hard evidence of collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaeda ; he told reporters at a State Department press conference that " I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I do believe the connections existed.

After the Ba ' ath Party seized power on July 17, 1968, Saddam expanded the Special Apparatus and took control of the Amn ( State Internal Security Department ).

* U. S. Department of State, Released September 13, 1999 ( updated 2 / 23 / 00 ), " Saddam Hussein's Iraq "

In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush said " The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The July 2002 pilot episode " Saddam ’ s Ultimate Solution " was hosted by former Assistant Secretary of State and chief State Department spokesman James Rubin.